Population Explosion Implosion

Have you ever looked at the world around you and wondered if you were the only sane person left?

I grew up in the period between the time when everyone thought they had to build bomb shelters to protect themselves from a nuclear war, and the period when everyone stopped building bomb shelters because they believed we were all going to die in a nuclear war and bomb shelters were only going to delay the inevitable. I grew up in a period when many believed that the earth was going to experience massive overpopulation and that we would run out of food and other essentials. I read the novels and watched the movies and listened to various people crunching numbers, describing our exponential growth, and promoting various measures that could be implemented to ensure our survival. Over time, I also learned that mathematicians knew nothing of human nature and really shouldn’t get involved in matters they knew nothing about. I also noticed that there were many promoters of this nonsense that were not as stupid and I might have supposed, nor did they have anyone’s best interest at heart – except their own.

Humans used to have large families. This was useful in an agrarian society and old habits followed us into and through the industrial revolution. However, family sizes did begin to shrink long before the massive propaganda concerning the Population Explosion. And each generation, with only minor exceptions, had smaller and smaller family sizes. Governments were, and still are, seeking population control measures for developing countries when the best method of birth control on the planet was and is “money”. The more money and the better odds of survival (including education and job prospects) that a family has, the less children they need to have and tend to have.

Yet, despite this obvious situation, combined with the knowledge that the other situation that has led to more people at this point in time is an improved life expectancy, I remember being taught about the starving children in China, Africa and India and how it was blamed on overpopulation; and at the same time being taught that the most densely populated country on earth was a white, European nation (this was in the 1970's). In deed, many of the most densely populated cities are from developed countries and were (and remain) quite prosperous. Further, many of the problems in the “undeveloped” countries had nothing to do with overpopulation. I was very young at the time, still in my teens, so I doubt I was the only one to notice that the problem with overpopulation had more to do with the colour of your skin, than with actual numbers. It wasn’t surprising to me to later learn that the precursor to the Population Explosion was the eugenics movement. And, while the theory of genetic improvement seemed reasonable to me as a university student (now graduate) with a genetics bent, it was hard to ignore that some of the more famous adherents to eugenics were a lot less scientific about the concept. Adolf Hitler started with the “obvious defectives” and worked his way up to slaughtering Jews and might have made his way to Catholics who opposed his views, had he not been stopped. On the other side of the ocean, Margaret Sanger founded an organization that would become known as Planned Parenthood. She believed that birth control and abortion were preferable (less disturbing) methods of reducing undesirable populations, as well as useful for having more fun without responsibility. Like Hitler, she also rejected genetically imperfect human specimens, and also included “races” such as Asians, blacks, Hispanics, Jews, and Catholics (I don’t know how she figured Catholicism was a race). Having watched the push for population control lead to extraordinary situations in India and China, I came to believe that eugenics had no place in science or in our human development. Only a completely ignorant buffoon, or a totally malicious individual, would have pushed for a one child per family rule in a country were the culture was totally male dominated – a situation we see in China (India has a milder version of the same problem). Only someone completely blind (shortsighted) would not have seen that this would lead to a massive gender imbalance and a social catastrophe in the future, only a truly wicked person wouldn’t be bothered by this eventuality.

With the drive to reduce the “surplus” population (those considered to be less desirable), without the desire to appear to be doing just that, we now have the ridiculous situation where we are now facing a population implosion – ironically, the greatest reduction in birthrates are appearing in the predominantly white, developed nations (see money is still be best birth control). Birthrates are also falling in the developing nations as well, but to a lesser degree. China is on the verge of becoming an economic superpower, thanks to its one billion plus citizens, only to face the specter of a rising generation with many young men who will have to either import brides or leave the country in order to marry, an aging population with insufficient offspring to support it, and the potential for massive euthanasia programs to deal with the resulting medical, economic and manpower shortfalls.

In order to reduce the effects of the looming population implosion, France and Quebec (Canada) have implemented programs to pay families to have more children. Other regions may have considered this option as well. However, once a trend gets established it isn’t easy to turn it around. Further, we have a mob mentality, just as it wasn’t good to have everyone suddenly stop having larger families, it would also not be good to have everyone having children just for the sake of increasing the world birthrates. I wouldn’t want to see a true population explosion. I would rather see a push toward responsible behavior and more respect for the family and let nature resolve itself.